Moshe Avigdor Amiel
(1883-1946)

Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv

Although
some sources place the birth
of Rabbi Moshe
Avigdor Amiel (1883-1946) in
Lida, the Jewish
Encyclopedia of Russia (RossiyskayaEvreiskaya
Entsiklopediya; Moscow:
1995) maintains that it took
place in Porozow.

Amiel,
who was an orthodox rabbi,
author, orator and
philosopher, studied under
his father at the Telz
Yeshivah and was ordained at
18. In 1905, he was appointed
Rabbi of Swieciany, where he
established a large yeshiva.
In 1913, he became Rabbi of
Grajewo, a town on the
Russian-German border.

He
became rabbi of Antwerp,
Belgium in 1920 and went on
to become chief Ashkenazi
rabbi of Tel Aviv in 1936.
He was the founder of
HayishuvHehadash, the first
modern high school yeshiva
in EretzYisrael.

Rabbi
Amiel drew on his extensive
background in
Talmud,
Halachah and
Midrash in his
analytical writings, which
included sermons and several
books, among them Light
for an Age of Confusion
and Ethics and Legality
in Jewish Law. An ardent
Zionist, he spoke out on the
character and legal system
of what was to become the
Jewish state in Palestine.

Ester-Ruchel Kaminska
(1870-1925)

"Mother of the Yiddish Theater"

Ester-Ruchel
Kaminska, née Halperin, known to audiences as
"the mother of the Yiddish theater," was surely Porozow's
most famous native-born daughter. A member of a theatrical
dynasty that included her husband, Abraham-Isaac Kaminski
(1867-1918) and her famous daughter, Ida Kaminska
(1899-1980), she performed in Warsaw, St. Petersburg,
Kiev, London, Paris and New York. She was born in Porozow to Chaim
Yochanan Halperin and his wife on the festival of Purim in
1870.

According to the
Encylopedia
Judaica, she was "hailed as the Yiddish Duse," a reference
to her contemporary, world-famous Italian actress Eleanora
Duse (1858-1924). She was also compared, during her
lifetime, to Sarah Bernhardt.

Her daughter Ida, nominated for an
Academy Award for her performance in "The Shop on Main
Street" (1965), remembered her this way in her 1973
memoir, My Life, My Theater: "When my mother suffered
onstage, she felt that she suffered not only for herself;
when she protested, she could clearly hear the protest of
all those to whom injustice had been done. She raised the
individual characteristic to the universal."

Michel
and Malka Chmielnitzki,
Pioneer Vinters in the Holy
Land

Michel
and Malka Chmielnitski (also
known as Chamiletzki), left
Porozow for the Holy Land,
and in 1882 first set foot
in Zichron Yaakov. Michel
made his home in Shefeya and
was asked by the Baron
Edmund de Rothschild to
develop vineyards. In 1925,
the famous poet Chaim
Nachman Bialik visited and
gave Michel a new family
name, "Tishbi," an acronym
for the Hebrew
Toshav
Shefeya B'Eretz Yisrael
(a resident of Shefeya in
Israel). The prophet Elija,
Eliyahu HaNavi
in
Hebrew, was also called haTishbi, and performed
many of his miracles in the
Carmel area, not far from
the winery.

Members of the Tishbi family
have been grape growers for
more than a century, and
today's Tishbi Estate, whose
site you can visit by
clicking on the label at
left, produces four series
of kosher wines that bear
the likeness of Michel and Malka on the label.